


guide book (on how to leave and staying gone)

by inkspl0tches



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Season 9, Trust No 1, and mind reading, in the 2nd person for no reason, some weird angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-28 04:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10823856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkspl0tches/pseuds/inkspl0tches
Summary: The weatherman says it’s squall weather, flat hissing air that drapes low over the horizon. The weatherman says there is a tornado five miles outside of the Lincoln. The weatherman says to go home.





	guide book (on how to leave and staying gone)

_But I miss you /_  
_But there's comin' home /_  
_With a name like mine_

____

On a street corner just outside Nebraska, a man is warning of the end of the world. You drive slow, crack a window just a little to let his staticky megaphone voice filter in with the flat air.

“The end is near.”

Clear your throat and wait for specifics. You’ve heard whispers of apocalypse from any number of lips, some of them much less credible than this man’s. You should be listening.

The sidewalk preacher waves cardboard and stencil scripture. He says, “Save who you can! Leave your loved ones behind if you must -- “

Oh. Roll up the window fast and with a soft snap as the glass hits the top of the car door. The words linger in the car like smoke. You crack a sunflower seed, turn up the radio. The weatherman says it’s squall weather, flat hissing air that drapes low over the horizon. The weatherman says there is a tornado five miles outside of the Lincoln. The weatherman says to go home.

I’m trying, you think. I am trying.

—

You dream of Scully sleeping. Dream of her chin tucked to her chest, her palms up like the sky is falling and she’s going to catch rain as proof. In these dreams, you will trace the veins on her wrist and make a crisscrossed road map of the United States, follow it up her arm.

I’m here, you say and point to the inside of her elbow, the curve of her bicep into her shoulder. I’m here, here and here.

This is a dream, she says, because even in sleep she is logical and precise and correct. You’re not here at all. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know if you’re anywhere.

She brushes her hands, eyes still closed, over the places you’ve touched just a half-second too late. You will never be able to tell if she’s trying to erase evidence or collect it.

And, this is important: Do not dream of your son, because even in your bear-trap, snap-shot subconscious Will’s face is a blurred image, a smooth, slippery thing you cannot get a grip on. He is yours and he is mostly hers. He is sea-glass in sand.

Do not dream of your son because the last time you saw him he was sweetly stone-faced and sleepy and blinking away his mother's tears, which were slipping off her chin and onto his cheek. The last time you saw your son he thought the world was the small safe square of Scully's apartment, and, careful, you do not want him to know there is something outside.

If you dream of Will, Will may dream of you. And you can't have that.

Protect what you can. Because you know that in roadside profit towns, in left-my-heart-in-xyz towns, in postcard stop towns and straight up shit towns, very little is safe.

Remember, for no reason at all: Scully used to read off the welcome signs, with their silly mottos, because she liked tradition and sincerity, even in shit towns, and, God, they’d make her smile.

—

Sometimes, write her brief love-story, Austen-esque quips on the backs of postcards and whatever you find in drug store aisles. Love you, miss you, can’t live without you - that kind of thing.

But more often, write long, illegible thoughts on the margins of articles that you print at backroad internet cafes or finds in obscure local gazettes. “But what’s the long face about, Mr. Starbuck?” on the corner of an article concerning strange creature sightings in an obscure Floridian lake. And then, just under the headline: Scully, do you remember?

Scully, is this, are you, did we, do you think. Long sentence strains crammed between lines about a missing town from the 1960s. Scrawls on solipsism and necktie paradoxes and dissonance and ghost towns.

Keep the cards and print-outs and cheap books and scribbled on receipts even though you shouldn’t. Somewhere not that smart, like your backpack or the glove compartment of the one-of-many-cars. Try to avoid writing her name and learn that very little competes with habit. She’s all over everything - from the long, almost unreadable strain of “miss you, love you” that trails down some 50 cent birthday card to the paragraph on parapsychology at the bottom of a message board post.

Realize you’ve always talked to her the same way, even before you knew what it meant. Know what it meant. In Arkansas, you’ll swerve to avoid a deer and hear the papers shudder against the side of the glove box, a sliding, quick-pulse sound that makes it impossible to tell love-note from margin-note.

(Know that they all say the same thing, really.)

—

With Gibson, when you’re both hiding out in the sun-bleached sand, it will be kind of like breathing underwater - unnatural, unreal, but necessary and sincere. It’ll be about survival and New Mexico dust and occasionally about baseball. You’ll think you’d would make an amusing sit-com pair, some quasi-father/son special. Except Gibson already has a father. And you. You are not supposed to dream about your son.

You don’t always stay, because you’re no good at it and this whole thing is a practice in leaving. But mostly, you know it’s better to pretend you’re chasing something if you move. To pretend that searching didn’t stop being the same as staring up into the sky and then closing your eyes a long time ago.

Gibson is broad and serious and jaded and kind. He doesn’t mind whether you stay or go, but he makes you pack food into the extra space in your bag before you leave. Doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at the odd assortment of unmailed letters and papers that ripple near the bottom.

And It’s almost easier to be alone, sometimes. At least then you can spin out your elaborate fantasy threads without Gibson catching them in his teeth, widening his eyes at the space in front of him or shaking his head slow. He says, "Every time you think of her, I feel like I need to sleep it off. You're giving me a psychic hangover."

Even if the kid wasn’t a mind reader - the being alone allows you to sink into the physicality of the whole thing. The on-the-run thing. The loneliness thing. You’re a good pantomime and a better empath.

Also, somewhat notable: Eventually, you won’t be able to remember what you’re running from anymore.

But you’ll remember Scully on a hot May evening with her hair clean and soft around her face and the windows open. You’ll remember your knees on her stiff rug, so you could hook your arm around her hip and look up at her. So you didn’t have to stand. Her straight back on the couch and how young and angry and terrified and immovable she looked. Her hand on your cheek and: “Get up, Mulder.” And: “I’m so sorry - you have to go. I’m so sorry.” And how she didn’t cry, not then.

The hot May air moving against her cheek, and Scully closing her eyes. Outside, someone on the street walking fast and their shoes clipping the pavement so it echoed. _Bang, bang._ Scully’s hand on your shoulder, drawing you up and against her. Once, she’d shot you and the recoil had sent you away rather than towards her outstretched hands. That was physics, simple. Now, you lean in. You’ve learned. You have to go. _Bang._

—

Gibson says over cereal: “She made you go?” A Cheerio slips off his spoon. Like a child he asks, “Why?”

You say, “Because.”

“Just because?” Gibson scoffs. “You know I could hear her thoughts too, right? Before?”

Gibson had been a kid. You want to say it: You were just a fucking kid. But you remember how just-a-fucking-kid had watched Diana get shot through a window and hadn't cried. You shrug. Sometimes you think it would be easier to be angry with her than anything else, so you try it on and slip it off like ill-fitting clothing.

“Not 'just because.' That’s bullshit.” Gibson almost laughs. “Mulder, you know that’s bullshit. I can hear you. Besides, she doesn’t think about you like that.”

Most of what Gibson remembers about Scully involves walking down a gray, echoey hallway and her holding his hand.

“Like what?” The assortment of cheap cereal boxes on the kitchen table look adolescent, like you are living in a teenage treehouse. This is how to almost-live. You chew the inside of your cheek.

Gibson looks hard at the table. “Like she can shrug you off.” He kicks the table leg. “Like you don’t matter.”

Earlier, Gibson had poured enough sugar into his Cheerios to turn them into candy. He’s a kid, you think again, but gently. He’s still just a fucking kid.

—

And it's unfair, but you will come back to her fully only after you’re gone. Some kind of barbed-wire catch-22 that isn’t worth analyzing for all the places it will sting.

Remember an evening in very early spring, the last gasp of winter blowing cold rain against your windows, before William was born. The ground was soft and wet, and you’d just woken up three weeks ago.

She’d found the tapes with all the other ones, she said. When she’d been going through some things. She was vague about specifics. There was a joke in there somewhere but you couldn’t bring yourself to find it. She'd hit the eject button on your VCR and it'd spit up _Caddyshack_ with an electronic whine. You will regret the reappropriation of space now. How you’d been sitting against the far end of the couch, letting miles of dark green leather pass between you as she pressed the new tape in and eased herself down.

“I don't know if you've seen it before. It's kind of silly, really. But I didn't want to get rid of it. I mean, I made a copy, too,” she'd said as the intro played. You’d thought: She never used to ramble. The VHS had spit out _Caddyshack_. God. “I wanted it, um,” she'd hesitated, twisting her sweater in her lap. “For the baby.”

That should have meant more than it did at the time. You filed it away, though, for when you could really think about it. On west-corner back roads, you finally will: She’d wanted it for the baby. Picture them now, William squirming and bored on her lap and the two of them with their hands up and Look, Will, that's your dad.

Try not to think about how everything had turned up infinitely different from what she must have imagined when she found the video, going through your things, and still almost infinitely the same.

On the screen, Scully had grabbed your arm and dragged you away from the camera’s greedy glare. Something about talking to her about werewolves. Off screen, the real Scully had sniffed and then moved strangely. Really, it'd taken you far too long to realize she was crying. You’d hit pause on the remote before saying anything, and even then she beat you to it.

“It’s nothing,” she'd said. She'd wiped at her eyes and then covered them for a moment. The Scully who was paused on the screen before you was dark-eyed, flinty. Beautiful and hard. She watched you like she’d like to have some kind of explanation for this. “Nothing,” this Scully said. Then shook her head.

Remember thinking that the Scully you’d kissed quickly on a curb before hopping in a baby blue cab to catch an Oregon-bound flight would have left it at that. Nothing, and then a closed lip stare. Eyes the same color as the rattling cab. This Scully was not that one. She wore softer clothes and filled out softer lines. She doesn’t look at you.

This Scully had hitched a half-sob somewhere in her chest and then whispered in half-sentences, but loud enough so you knew she was talking to you, wanted you to hear. “I know I shouldn’t - It’s not fair of me to - With all you’ve been through. I just.” The breath she took ran through her like a shock. She'd gestured vaguely at the screen and looked like she might have laughed at herself, even with her breath uneven. “I miss you.”

For some reason, this felt like the most honest thing she’d said in weeks. Something about the way she shrugged off the words, just an uncertain twitch of her shoulders, will keep breaking your heart in ad infinitum. 

You had wanted to say: Me too. I miss my sharp, match-stick Scully who was hard to strike and harder to put out. Wanted to point at the screen and say: I miss her. I miss her, too. I miss the way she would say Nothing and mean it, or not. The way she’d look at me. The sometimes coldness of her stare and her hands.

But that wasn’t fair. Even then, still feeling the chill of cold earth in your ribs and knuckles, you’d know that wasn’t fair. So you’d shaken your head at the static on the screen. Said, “Scully, I - “

And nothing after. She’d reached for the remote, wiping at her eyes, and you’d reached for her hand, covered her fingers on the buttons in an awkward, familiar tangle and hit the off button. Her hands were cold, still. You’d watched the static on the screen in silence, her cold hand in yours, listened to the wind and waited for the walls to blow down.

You will want to tell her now that you understand. That when you miss her it is in every iteration, a physical longing for some corporeal combination of past, present, future. You will miss her by the blue cab and on the leather couch and in the soft clothes and in Oregon or Georgia or Georgetown.

You will want to tell her you are so sorry and mean it.You will want to do more than hold her hand and be relieved that it is still cold. Will want lean across the green couch and put your lips against where the collar of her soft shirt met her soft skin and whisper: _Werewolves._

—

“Mulder, man,” Gibson says. He throws a baseball hard but with little aim. You watch it arc up, parabolic and hard to pinpoint. The New Mexico sky is a blinding, bracing blue. You can hear Gibson kick the dirt. “Jesus. Why don’t you just go home?”

—

For every week you spend with Gibson, you spend at least two stringing yourself from motel to motel with the roads in between dark and limp. Power lines.

Once, you’ll see her on T.V. Just for a split-second. Channel surfing, chasing some nothing lead through Durango in a deadbeat town where the diner waitress’ accent skews too far South to be real. You’ll turn up the volume fast but only catch the tail-end of it. Something about teenage boys and bugs, some cable show and local high school. Scully is in the background, just for a second. Her arms are crossed tightly against her chest. She surveys the scene, just a flash of red as she turns her head and for a second it looks like she might glance right into the camera and - the feed will cut to a commercial.

You will have your hand on the phone so fast the chill of the plastic will surprise you. It will seem so simple, familiar. “Hey, looking good on Channel 4, doc.” Something like that. Anything, really.

Like a Moebius strip, let the back-up footage play in the front of your mind: The version of this where you call and she picks up and she’s relieved and so are the people who are looking for you, who are looking for a sign that she knows where you are so they can beat it out of her. And they do. And William cries and she bleeds and -

(You will be miles out of New Mexico, but still hearing Gibson, shaking his head in disgust: _Would it kill you to think about her, I don’t know, alive? Like, happy? The horror movie specials are only fun every two weeks and on Fridays._ )

You’ll tighten your hand on the phone but never pick it up. In the side pocket of your backpack, you have a copy of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ that she’d bought for you at some garage sale three years ago, even though you already had a copy. You have never been good at letting go.

—

And when it is too cold to be outside, you’ll lay flat on the bed of a pick-up truck because the bite of it is soothing. You never were a very good Boy Scout, but point out Cassiopeia, the mother, to Gibson because it reminds you of the smell of camp smoke. Signal fire.

Gibson says, “I don’t think anyone is looking that hard.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean for us, for you. I haven’t heard anything in a long time.”

Nod like you understand. The sky above is blurry if you don’t try to see it. Pinpricks of soft light. “Yeah, but what does it _mean_.”

You’ll be able to feel Gibson look at you. “Do you think Mom wants to know whether or not you’re having fun at summer camp?”

Smile in a way that feels real enough to use as evidence. Proof positive that it might be safe now; it might be time. Above you, Cassiopeia comes in and out focus. You have been losing track of months.

—

"You're sure you don't want to, I don't know, call her?"

"Yes."

"Is this because you always think she's going to get kill-"

You’ll have to be clear: ”No, that's not why."

"Then why?"

Gibson will wait. He likes silence, to be alone. He is nothing if not patient.

Picture Scully answering the phone and for once push aside all thoughts of repercussions or violence. Instead, you see it: She answers, in her kitchen, maybe, and there is shock and relief and disbelief on her face. She covers her eyes, like on your green couch months ago, and leans back against the counters. And maybe William is in her arms and he pulls at her collar and he's so big. But she's crying, and that's what you think about most.

Or. Think about it this way too: She answers, in her kitchen, maybe, and there is shock and disbelief and anger. William is not in the room. She hisses something into the phone because she hates you for leaving. She's realized her mistake. She is furious. She is indifferent. She hangs up.

Gibson will raise his eyebrows. He’ll say, "Really? This shit still? She had your kid."

Pretend you don’t know exactly which version of this scenario he’s referring to. Say something like, "If she cries, I'll walk back to D.C., Gibson. And my shoes aren't gonna last that long."

Gibson laughs but in the way you do when there's just nothing else to say. Then he shakes his head.

"God," he says, "You two are fucked up."

—

Nothing on the road, in New Mexico, where the sun is always the same, feels linear. A few weeks ago, at a diner, you'd talked to her for a while.

It went like this:

Almost an accident, like the time you'd almost kissed her when she got out of the car at a crime scene. Part habit and part instinct and part of whatever serious hold she has on you. Her sharp nails and white teeth. You think how familiar the setting is - red-white booths in faux-wood paneling. White light and display-case pie. You’ve been at a hundred diners like this with her but can’t remember the last time. So pull a napkin from the silver holder and uncap a pen and ask her.

_Scully, when did we last sit at a diner together after midnight?_

And then, because it was after midnight, and you haven’t slept for two-days, she tells you: W _hen I was pregnant and couldn't sleep. It was warm out. I was glad you were an insomniac._

When you had been able to read her mind, it was never been as clear-cut as this. Mostly it had been images, tinted with the intensity of whatever she was feeling. In the hospital, right after Africa, she’d been seeing in shades of red and deep-sea blue.

Logically, you know you are not talking to her, or to anyone, but the hardwiring in your brain can do a mean imitation of her voice.

Remember the last time: You’d still been sleeping at your apartment. She'd called, sounding worn out and frustrated and inexplicably shy. You’d picked her up on the curb of her apartment and fought the urge to chide her for standing around, pregnant and alone, on the side of a street after midnight. For some reason, you’d felt like you didn't have the right. Like it was your fault she was pregnant and alone and prone to standing around at midnight in the first place. The answer was all of the above. You’d bought her fries and a milkshake and then brought her back to the apartment. She'd fallen asleep, warm and worn, sideways on your bed, muttering something about dress shirts and feeding your fish. You’d woken up with one arm around her and a craving for french fries.

Smile. "Yeah, I remember."

A kind glance from a waitress. Realize you've spoken out loud. Smile in reassurance, wave sweetly like you learned on the Vineyard. Hi, sorry, I'm not crazy.

From the corner nearest the rain-grey, fogged window, Scully chimes in. Her voice light and quick with laughter: _Mulder, don't lie to her._

Close your eyes. Put the pen in your pocket, crush the napkin in your hand. Order fries and a milkshake and wonder why you never asked what she’d wanted to tell you about sleeping sideways, about fish food and dress shirts.

—

Let Gibson type it because your hands shake. You’d promised her you wouldn’t do this, but it’s not really you doing it if Gibson touches the keys. “You’re in my head all the time anyway, right? Just -- let her know I’m alive. Tell her what I’m thinking.”

Gibson prints you off a sent copy, avoids your eyes. Skim the first line and bark a laugh. “ _Dana?_ ”

Gibson turns red under the glow of his perpetual sunburn. He rubs the back of his neck. “What? I said I didn’t want to write it.”

Laugh again, but in a way that feels like breathing. “Have you been reading a lot of dime-store romance lately? I can pick up _Cosmo_ next week when I go to Albuquerque if you want.”

“Hey, fuck you.There’s only one thing I’ve been reading lately,” Gibson mumbles, shuffling side to side on the uneven floor. He nods towards Mulder.

Think: _Dearest._ Fold up the email and squeeze Gibson’s shoulder.

Gibson rolls his eyes, smiles like he’s in the seventh grade and says, “I am not sweet. You guys are disgusting.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Gibson rolls his eyes again. His glasses are small and dirty resting on his nose, and he suddenly looks so young. I’m lonely, he’d written for you. The only other person you had been with for six months and when he’d dug around inside your head all he’d found was lonely.

Sunlight filters in the trailer window and catches the dust on Gibson’s laptop screen. There is something in his posturing and embarrassment and derision that makes you want to ask him how his day was at school. If he’s met a girl or a boy or anyone else. But there’s no one else out here in the desert, and Gibson likes silence. Grin at him again instead.

For the first time that night, you are allowed to dream about your son.

—

She’d asked you not to go, in the end.

Or, hadn’t asked, but had tucked herself against you in the dark and lied. You’d asked if she was alright, which was stupid. And she’d breathed and said, “What if I’m having headaches again. Like before. With the cancer.”

And you’d known that wasn’t true. Known the serious, fault-lines of pain in her body that always gave her away. She’d been slow, sleepy, sore, but nothing like before. Her nose hadn’t bled, and you didn’t think it would.

You’d shaken your head so she could feel the motion. “Scully, don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sick.”

She’d nodded against your chest. You waited for whatever other tragedy or test she might create. You’d never known her to be this way, but you’d also never known her to be a new mother, known her to cry in a helicopter out of Georgia and refuse to let anyone other than you touch her. She was nothing if not a well adapted shape-shifter, but she always found herself back in her base form, eventually.

“If you’d known,” she’d asked and she’d meant about Will, about the baby, because for the past year he’s been the thing in everything you don’t say, in all the silences. “Would you have stayed?”

You'd told her the truth without biting it back. She'd cried, quiet and still, against your shoulder so as not to wake the baby, until she fell asleep. You'd said a hundred different things that you never wanted her to have to ask you. A hundred more things you'd thought she'd already known. 

__

Scully writes her own purple-prose, but for some reason, it’s not as amusing when you can picture her alone in her apartment. William asleep in a crib in the living room because she’d want to watch him. Night sounds and street noise.

Lie flat on your back in bed and wonder when the last time was that you voluntarily spent so much time away from her. Think about Russia. About how you’d left her even though she was dying because it was too important, would have meant too much for you to stay. Think about: _What if I'm having headaches._

Think about _dearest_ and want to laugh this time too but don’t. Think about her sick, but in a different way, and sniffling on your couch sometime last summer. In between L.A. and the end of your forced sabbatical, because only Scully would get sick when you were already on vacation.

You’d pulled her up after she hacked her way through Moonstruck, and she’d blinked sleepily. You’d said something quiet, without any real meaning. Something like “come on, honey.”

“Honey?” she’d said, her voice like she was speaking through cotton or the named substance.

“Mmm?” Her entire body was hot against yours as you lead her to the bedroom. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

She’d shaken her head. “Not sorry. Don’t be sorry.” She’d laughed. “ _Honey._ ”

Think about that. About staying instead of going. About kissing her the first time she was sick. About how you didn’t do either of those things. Think about revisionist history and her fever-laughter in the blue-light of your fishtank. About _dearest_ and _honey_ and _baby_ and _doctor_ and _enigmatic_. About the handful of things you do not regret.

—

The more important message comes two days later:

M -

Rokovoko. 7pm.

S

This is the combined, carefully constructed sum of the two of you. This is both your whip-smart partner and the mother of your child. Rokovoko. A true place, not down on any map. This is carefully planned code and procedure. This is her asking you to come home.

—

After the New Year, when your arm was out of a cast and Pfaster wasn't out of prison, you’d talked her into bed on a Sunday morning and asked about Africa.

"This is why you wanted me in bed?" She'd hooked a leg over yours, tilted her head quizzically.

"I wanted you in bed for many reasons, but to hear a striking rendition of your time as an archeologist was one, yes."

She'd scrunched up her nose and you'd laughed, your hand moving lightly over her hip. "That surprises you?"

Blowing out a breath, she'd rolled back onto the other side of the bed. "No. What's scary is how much it doesn't."

"Terrifying.” You'd moved closer until you could sling an arm around her waist and rest your head on her shoulder. "So. What did you think about?"

"I thought about Skinner, oddly." She'd looked at you sideways, the corner of her mouth curling. "Don't make that face. I mean in the sense that he was fending off all the psych ward bureaucracy hell by himself."

"Oh, sure."

She'd laughed in a way that she had the first year you’d worked together. The way that had been hidden, condensed, covered up, by years and years. "I'm serious!"

"I would never accuse you of not being serious, Agent Scully."

That had made her laugh again. She'd slid away from and then over you. Her hair had fallen into her face and it brushed your cheeks, lips, as she leaned down. "I thought about you. About this. About coming home."

That should not surprise you, but it does in the same adrenaline-fueled way you let your heart pound over every piece of evidence for something you already thought you believed in.

"I'm serious," she'd said, smiling. "Remember?"

—

You step off the train into a part of Virginia you’ve never been to before. Rokovoko. A true place. You are clean-shaven and showered and you don’t bring your back pack because if you want to ask her what she thinks about the probability of will-o-wisps in the South, or tell her that you love her, missed her, can't live without her, you will out loud.

Scully. Scully like a statue on the platform. Scully on the platform and looking the wrong direction, which is so like her that it makes your chest feel heavy and full with the familiarity of it. She is half turned away, eyes on cars farther down the track. All in black, but her hair is longer. On her other side, gently touching her hip, is heavy-duty stroller. Smile, because you can picture her buying it, carefully walking the salesman through every safety feature. Your pragmatic, enigmatic Dr. Scully.

From the stroller, a sweet, tiny hand reaches out and grasps at the air. Scully pulls her eyes off the other cars to murmur something. She rocks the stroller it gently back and forth with a minute movement of her hip. You are reminded of her voice in a Florida, forest, genuine and out of tune. When she speaks again, you’re closer, and if she says "almost here" or "be here soon" or any other waiting-platitudes that will go uninterpreted by your son, it doesn't matter. All you catches clearly is Here. And you think: I am. I am.

You’re close enough to smell her perfume and the antiseptic sting of a hospital and a base-note of baby powder. Breathe in deep and reach out and touch her shoulder.

Scully turns so fast, Quantico fast, like you learn in suspect-take down scenarios. Your hand slips. And there she is. Blue eyes like the tint on the rattling cab and soft lines. You’re suddenly not sure if she's going to cry or kiss you or pull out her weapon and shoot. You think in any of these scenarios, you’re going to die. Because it's her and it's dearesthoneybaby and it's the object of your melodramatic fantasies and your silent diner conversationalist, but mostly, unbelievably, unfathomably, it is Scully. And she is here, where you are, in a place you cannot find on maps.

—

Gibson helps you pack, which mostly consists of sitting on his corner bed and commenting on how poorly you’re folding your clothes. You’re not bringing the letters, the postcards, and the books. In your back pocket: a train ticket and the note from Scully. Rokovoko.

It's been quiet for fifteen minutes. In your head, you see her turn fast enough to drop you to your knees.

Gibson clears his throat. Look up quickly. You’re past being embarrassed around Gibson, but it still feels like you should apologize. You are leaving him here, after all.

But Gibson smiles. You remember how he likes to be alone. How he is just a fuckin kid.

“I like that one,” he says. He means this final brand of fantasy, this thing that had converged with daydream and expectation and become almost tangible. This one that is not about leaving, that is not about learning how to count the steps from her door to the stairs and then losing track.

You fold a t-shirt with excess caution. Clear your throat. “Yeah?”

“Well, yeah,” Gibson scuffs the dirt with his shoe. His sun-burned cheeks knit up in a hint of a smile. He looks proud, almost hopeful. Like you’re learning something. “Mulder, I mean, it was happy."

—

She doesn't cry. Or kiss you. Or pull out her gun. She smiles and it turns her into something you’ve never seen before. Some perfect amalgamation of everything you’ve imagined for six months and everything she's always been. From the stroller, still turned away from you, William babbles happily to himself. Scully reaches out and pulls your face down to hers, hands still cold.

She says, "You're here. You're right here."

Nod, but don’t tell her your secret. Which is this: You have never been anywhere else.

__

And you don’t know it yet. You won’t for a while. But this has never been a lesson in homecoming. The land outside the train is wide and gaping, the certain stillness of a children’s book monster. I’ll eat you up, I love you so. This is a lesson in staying gone.

New Mexico wavers like a flame in your periphery, but never, ever disappears.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Rokovoko or Kokovoko is the fictional island home of the character Queequeg, as described in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick.
> 
> They're nerds, folks.


End file.
